Contraception Has Led to Bondage, Not Liberation
p.19
by Jack Kocienski, copyright 1993

Twenty-six years ago Pope Paul VI issued his famous encyclical Humanae 
Vitae, which addressed the topic of artificial birth control. To many, 
this was a watershed event, not only in Catholicism but in all of 
Christianity.

Actually, it was not. The Pope was confirming the official teaching of 
the Catholic Church, which had been handed down through the ages, and 
what all of Christianity taught until the 1930's. The Protestant 
reformers Luther and Calvin held that contraception was an abomination. 
It wasn't until 1930 that the Anglican Church agreed to allow the use 
of contraceptives in "difficult cases" within marriages. That was the 
watershed event.

This became a big issue in the mid-1960's as dissident Catholic 
theologians looked for a reason to spar with Rome; by this time most of 
the rest of Christianity had already dropped its age-old prohibition 
of contraception.

But could anyone really argue that sexual "liberation," unleashed by 
the easy availability of contraceptives, has led to strong families or 
to the enhanced dignity of men and women?

The statistics answer that question. Over the last 30 years, 
illegitimate births have gone from 5.3% to 28%; children with single 
mothers from 8 percent to 28.6%. We also have the highest teenage 
pregnancy rate in our country's history; the AIDS epidemic; the highest 
abortion rate in the Western world; record child abuse, rape and 
incest.

Students receive explicit instruction in the use of condoms, and their 
educators tell us that by no means are they encouraging teens to have 
sex. Spur Posse parents boast of their sons as "virile specimens" and 
shrug off the sexual fun and games with a "boys will be boys" attitude, 
as the boys rack up scores while saying, "Sex to us is like taking 
vitamins, because if you don't have sex, you're not going to grow up 
right."

Have you listened to the reasons people give for using contraceptives? 
"We just got married and we are not ready for kids." "We want to give 
quality time to the children we already have." "We simply cannot afford 
another child." "I'd go crazy if we had any more kids." These are the 
same reasons women use on the doorstep of an abortion mill.

When people use birth control, they are saying, "No, I do not want 
children." How do pro-life people expect to defeat child-killing when 
we cannot defeat child-rejection in our own midst?

The purpose of contraception and sterilization is to have sexual 
intercourse without producing children. Contraception is an abomination 
because it frustrates the Lord's design for sexual intercourse. He 
commanded us to "be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth."

If we shut out either of its two essential elements, the unitive and 
the procreative, sexual intercourse becomes an immoral act. By 
safeguarding these essential aspects of the conjugal act, we preserve 

in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its design for a 
couple's highest calling: parenthood.

Although some Bible-believing people rationalize contraception, the 
Bible says that  the use of contraceptives is an abomination. While the 
word "contraception" is not used, in Genesis 38:9-10 and Psalm 127 we 
can see what God's Word has to say about the subject.

Because we as a culture are so immersed in contraception, it is hard to 
see it as the evil it is. Could it be more than coincidence that once 
contraception became acceptable, divorce followed suit, as well as 
premarital sex and abortion?

Isn't it interesting that there is a progression that leads to 
abortion? It starts with sex education in the schools, followed by 
acceptance of the use of contraceptives (passed out by our educators) 
and ultimately a trip to the abortion mill.

Although God did command us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the 
earth, He did not command us to reproduce imprudently. Self-control and 
periodic abstinence within a system of natural family planning provide 
a method to postpone conception without offense to God's design.

Jack Kocienski appears weekly on Camarillo (CA) Christian Television. 
This article previously appeared in the Camarillo Daily News.

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